The Sentient Search Engine

Thing #15 for Learn & Play asks those following along to look at library wikis. Looking at the four mentioned specifically (three of which I’d seen before), I was struck by something. Librarians don’t really seem to ”get” wikis. I think it’s great that there’s a willingness to try out new technology and explore new concepts, but I doesn’t look like they understand said concepts yet. Just look at the four blogs highlighted in the post.

1. SJCPL Subject Guides- This is the best of the four in many ways, but take heed! This wiki can only be edited by Librarians! I truly do get why, and fully respect the reasoning. After all, as librarians we are charged with providing accurate and useful information. Therefore, the idea of a publicly editable wiki of Subject Guides goes against the grain of our professional ethos completely. However, a publicly accessible wiki editable only by a small group of people goes against the wiki ethos just as much. Libraries need to decide if they trust their community and create something in collaboration with the community (content reviewed by librarians rather than created wholly by Liberians). If not, then maybe an “old fashioned” public website with subject guide pages would be more appropriate. A wiki format has built into it the expectation of user participation, and if the user is kept from participating, then the wiki format may well prove counter productive. If I were to be completely honest, the staff wiki for my branch isn’t even publicly viewable, let alone publicly editable. However, any member of its intended audience can edit, and that makes all the difference.
2. Book Lovers Wiki- This one really confuses me. This wiki is no longer in active use because its supposed to be a “snapshot in time” of what folks were reading in the 2006 Summer Reading Club. That’s all well and good, but that’s not what a wiki is really supposed to be! A wiki is a living, breathing, evolving website that changes with time rather than sit statically. If they wanted to create such a snapshot, a section integrated into their public web site would have been more appropriate. Let me emphasize this point again. If your creating content that you don’t expect to ever change (with any frequency anyway), you don’t need a wiki!!! A web page/site will suffice!!!! (End of sermon)
3. Library Sucess: a best practices wiki- Another wiki that confuses me, but for different reasons. Where exactly is the content!!! Some of the sections are fleshed out well, but a startling majority are quite barren (one or two sentences, if that). We’re supposed to be librarians people! Do you mean to tell me that this is the best we can do? This could be an excellent resource if we get folks to participate! I guess this isn’t so much a knock on the site as it is on us! Lets get moving people!!
4. Bull Run -This site confuses me as well. First of all, it defaults to the “external links” section on the sidebar. Are we trying to get rid of people? It should default to your own content, “the sidebar” tab. Be proud! Highlight yourself!! Second, the site seems to specialize in sharing news and upcoming event information. These are not exactly specialties for wikis. A blog would be much more efficient for a sharing news and a calender app like Google Calender would be more effective at sharing the event information. Finally, doesn’t it seem like this wiki has a lot of information that should appear on the library’s web page? Granted, looking at the Prince William County Library site, I can see why the Bull Run branch would want their own web presence. Still, the library system web site should be there to provide a lot of this information.

I don’t want to come off as a jerk, it just seems to me that libraries need to think more about the appropriateness of the technology their using to the tasks they’re trying to accomplish. Having a wiki for its own sake is borderline silly.